photos with Nikkor 50mm f/1.8

[maria]

hello!

Couple of months ago i bought a nikon D50 and the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lense.
Now i need some advices and opinions on my pictures as i want to see what i did ok and where i did wrong.
Here are some pictures i took couple of weeks ago:

alina in colors (http://irmaria.blogspot.com/2006/10/alina-in-colors.html)

alina in black and white (http://irmaria.blogspot.com/2006/10/alina-in-black-and-white.html)

[Esoterra]

hello!

Couple of months ago i bought a nikon D50 and the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lense.
Now i need some advices and opinions on my pictures as i want to see what i did ok and where i did wrong.
Here are some pictures i took couple of weeks ago:

alina in colors (http://irmaria.blogspot.com/2006/10/alina-in-colors.html)

alina in black and white (http://irmaria.blogspot.com/2006/10/alina-in-black-and-white.html)

Overall you have some great shots there. Nice saturated colours, great model, and good framing. It looks like you did some touchup during PP (post processing Soft Focus) which really adds to the picture, however the face looks really soft and I dont know if its from PP or if you had your lens wide open. Just out of curiosity, what post processing are you doing exactly?

[maria]

The pictures are taken at f1.8, only one of them is at f3.2. The soft look si because of the post processing. I've added gaussian blur on a new soft light layer. The bad part is that doing this some details of the face were lost.

[Esoterra]

They look great Maria. Maybe try adding a layer mask with the Gaussian blur and paint away the gaussian blur over the face... specifically the eyes, nose and mouth. f/1.8 is great for low light situations, but when you are shooting in great lighting, try to avoide wide open apertures like 1.8 so you have a greater depth of field to work with... Unless you are going for that look.

[maria]

They look great Maria. Maybe try adding a layer mask with the Gaussian blur and paint away the gaussian blur over the face... specifically the eyes, nose and mouth.

WaW ! Thanks for the advice. I didn't use that before. I will try it out to see what cames up!

Thanks again.:)

[ktixx]

I have to say I agree with the above comments. The composition of the pictures is nice, but the blur significantly takes away from the image. I think it would be much nicer if the entire subject was sharp, or if a mask was used to keep the face/eye's/mouth in focus.
Nice work overall
Ken